There are many cases in which it is desired to effect remote control of the operation of a certain number of receivers or actuators from a centralized control point. A known solution consists in associating each receiver or actuator with a terminal which receives messages from a control terminal located at the control point, the terminals deriving the actuating signals for the receivers in response to received messages.
This type of installation is experiencing particularly significant development, especially in the realm of home automation. As is known, particularly in a living place, this technique consists in allowing centralized remote control from a central control console of a certain number of receivers installed at different locations. This console can be programmed to transmit instructions automatically to different receivers at predetermined instants or it can receive a particular command from a site occupant to control the operation of the receiver remotely. As is well known, the receivers or actuators can be very varied. Remote control of light switches, turning television sets, video tape recorders, etc. on or off, turning heating on or off, turning electric cookers on or off may be cited.
The remote control is effected from a control terminal, which is connected to a plurality of controlled terminals, each terminal being connected to one of the receivers to control its operation. The controlled terminals are connected to the control terminal over a network to enable the control terminal to send instruction messages to the various controlled terminals, and enable them to send acknowledgement messages for example to the control terminal.
It will readily be understood that, in such an installation and particularly in the case of a home automation installation, it is very important to be able to modify the structure of the network connecting the controlled terminals to the control terminal, especially in order to allow the addition of new terminals associated with new receivers. Particularly in the case of home automation it is very desirable that the procedures for installing new terminals on the network shall be very simple, so that they can be implemented by the occupants of the sites in which the remote control network is installed, without the need for special knowledge. In such a network, each terminal which is to effect control or be controlled is identified by specific data which allows identification of the origin of the message during transmission and identification of the destination of the message during reception. As a result, when installing a new controlled terminal on the network, one of the operations which is necessary is to give the new terminal data specific thereto, to make this specific data known to the control terminal and to make the data specific to other controlled terminals and more particularly specific to the control terminal known to the new controlled terminal.
An object of the present invention is to provide a method and a system for transmitting messages between a control terminal and controlled terminals installed on a network, which allows installation of new controlled terminals on the network in a simple manner and which has great flexibility in implementation.